About Me

As an only child, born into a loving, if protective family I was given every encouragement to develop my creative passions. Writing has always been one of them and I was writing stories as soon as I could hold a pen properly. I still remember the thrill I got when one of my stories won a coveted classroom prize and was read out to the school and displayed in pride of place on the wall of my classroom. I was five!

I used to tell stories about a character called Wigapom Elf to children at a Tufty Road Safety Club, when I was about 9 and I wrote several ‘novels’ in my growing up years with some dubious titles – ‘Run over the Rapids’ being one! Even Wigapom appeared in a novel when I was about 14, called’ Search for the Eye of Treowen’ (Truth) and from the time I began my teaching career I self-penned books to use in the classroom situation, as well as for my own children as they grew up.

Wigapom, as you will have gathered, has been part of my life for many years, and like me has changed, grown up and developed in that time. He has waited patiently in the wings while I experienced the life I needed to write ‘The Wigapom Quest,’ which is aimed at the Child in every Adult and the Adult in every Child.

Another of my passions has always been musical theatre and performing, and I combined this with my desire to teach by gaining my Certificate of Education in Drama at Goldsmiths College and completing my probationer year at a junior school in Kent. But fate stepped into my plans, as with a broken engagement behind me my life then took a different course and I left teaching, temporarily, to see a bit of life outside the sometimes narrow perimeter of the educational world and found myself working in the site offices of the Second Dartford Tunnel – later dubbed ‘The Tunnel of Love’ by our colleagues, for here I met a good-looking engineer called Michael, who asked me to marry him and I readily agreed. We moved to the lovely village of Feering where we became the ‘folks who live on the hill’ and raised two wonderful sons here, who continue to make us burst with love and pride. One of them has designed this website and the cover of ‘The Wigapom Quest’

As they began their education I felt the urge to return to working with children and set up my own nursery school with Glynis, a dear friend, and for thirteen years we had the pleasure of seeing and experiencing the magical early years of so many wonderful children, several of whom I am still in touch with, some through the singing/musical theatre group I run. It was an opportunity (readily taken!) to allow my own joyful inner Child to come out to play (along with the sensible Adult too) and to let imaginations soar in ways that made the children’s learning experiences full of fun, sparkle and purpose. We had a waiting list as long as the proverbial arm, and the first Pre-School Learning Alliance accreditation in North East Essex and ex-pupils still remember things they did when they came to ‘Magpies’.

It was here, in this environment that I fully realised the true magic of childhood, and how important self esteem and confidence are to becoming a whole person, and how easy these are to establish given the right conditions for growth, but also how fragile they can be if not nurtured with love and care.

Having always been fascinated by ‘what makes people tick’, it was these experiences with the children that began to sow the seeds of wanting to understand more about adult psychology, so I enrolled on a three year part time, Person-Centred Counselling course, knowing immediately that this was just where my next stage of life would be. As well as the person centred approach, we learnt about the Parent, Child and Adult states in Transactional Analysis- and I had already witnessed these in the young children I worked with. We learnt about the ‘parts therapy’ within Gestalt theory and this appealed to my dramatic imagination. I also began a year long Hypnotherapy course at this time and came to discover the work of inner child therapist John Bradshaw and, again, I felt that I had come home. Along with my growing spiritual understanding, I knew this was what I had to be doing: helping the hidden, magical soul Child within the Adult re-appear from under the burdens carried by the Adapted Child. However, to do this would mean I would have to let my own third child- the nursery –now grow up without me. It was a hard decision to make but one that I knew was right and in 2000 I began the next phase of my life’s journey and spiritual pathway by setting up my Counselling and therapy practice. I am still practising (!) I also teach the Person Centred Counselling Module as part of the PHTA course at Regents College London, both of which are an absolute joy to do.

My spiritual path had its foundations fully laid when I was 37, as a result of my dearly loved dad’s death from cancer. I was with him as he died and it was a profound experience. I had always believed in life after death but was now determined to know and understand more. As synchronicity had it, my mother’s art teacher, Valerie, was also a spiritual healer and she spent hours talking, explaining, and demonstrating her knowledge and wisdom to me. She loaned me countless books – from Alice Bailey to Anthony Borgia and I devoured them all and asked for more. The information I was reading can only be described as ‘coming home’- as though I had known about it before and was just re-discovering it after a period of time. I have always been a practical person, as well as creative and it just made ‘sense’. I joined a closed spiritual circle that Valerie was beginning and so my spiritual healing journey took off. Over twenty years later I am still in the circle – now running it myself, and have also trained as an NFSH Healer and Tutor, becoming Regional Training Officer for Essex, Suffolk, Cambridge and Norfolk and working as both a Regional as well as for a time a National Tutor. I also run a Healer Support group locally to help those just beginning on their healing pathway.

As well as this I continue to exercise my creative self in singing and performing in musical theatre shows, which I write and direct, helping, along with the other members of Feering Singers, to raise money for charity and having a lot of fun into the bargain.

Then, about three years ago, in 2007 Wigapom came out of the cosy corner where he had been for so long and tapped me on the shoulder, telling me I could use him as a vehicle to put all of my creativity, healing experience and psychological understanding into a book to spread a message of hope, to appeal to the Child in every Adult and the Adult in every Child and ‘The Wigapom Quest’ was born.